CVE-2026-110499

Client-chosen HPACK encoder table size is applied uncapped, growing per-connection state with every response in Bandit

Published Oct 26, 2026 CVSS 4.0 · 8.7 High EPSS < 1% KEV · Not listed
Description
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in the HTTP/2 implementation of mtrudel bandit allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to grow per-connection memory and CPU cost without bound via a large SETTINGS_HEADER_TABLE_SIZE. Bandit resizes its HPACK encoder table to whatever size the client advertises, up to 2^32-1 bytes, and indexes response headers into it. Because responses carry distinct values such as date or content-length, nothing is evicted and the table grows with every response for the life of the connection, while each lookup scans it linearly.

The SETTINGS handling in Bandit.HTTP2.Connection (lib/bandit/http2/connection.ex) passes remote_settings.header_table_size to HPAX.resize/2 with no server-side cap, and encode_headers encodes every response header as :store. Serving N responses on one connection therefore costs O(N²) CPU in the connection process.

This issue affects bandit: from 0.3.6 before 1.14.0.

Remediation

Vendor Workaround

From 0.7.0, cap the requests one HTTP/2 connection may serve, for example with http_2_options: [max_requests: 1000], so each connection and its encoder table is closed before the cost grows large. Alternatively, disable HTTP/2 with http_2_options: [enabled: false].

Tracking

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Advisories

No advisories available
History
Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'yes', 'Exploitation': 'none', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in the HTTP/2 implementation of mtrudel bandit allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to grow per-connection memory and CPU cost without bound via a large SETTINGS_HEADER_TABLE_SIZE. Bandit resizes its HPACK encoder table to whatever size the client advertises, up to 2^32-1 bytes, and indexes response headers into it. Because responses carry distinct values such as date or content-length, nothing is evicted and the table grows with every response for the life of the connection, while each lookup scans it linearly. The SETTINGS handling in Bandit.HTTP2.Connection (lib/bandit/http2/connection.ex) passes remote_settings.header_table_size to HPAX.resize/2 with no server-side cap, and encode_headers encodes every response header as :store. Serving N responses on one connection therefore costs O(N²) CPU in the connection process. This issue affects bandit: from 0.3.6 before 1.14.0.
Title Client-chosen HPACK encoder table size is applied uncapped, growing per-connection state with every response in Bandit
First Time appeared Mtrudel
Mtrudel bandit
Weaknesses CWE-770
CPEs cpe:2.3:a:mtrudel:bandit:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Vendors & Products Mtrudel
Mtrudel bandit
References
Metrics cvssV4_0

{'score': 8.7, 'vector': 'CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N'}

Weaknesses

Sources

Status
PUBLISHED
Assigner
EEF
Published
Updated
Oct 26, 2026, 3:35 PM
Reserved
Oct 22, 2026, 9:30 AM
Status
Awaiting Analysis
Published
Oct 26, 2026, 2:16 PM
Modified
Oct 26, 2026, 4:59 PM